Thursday, 9 March 2017

Multiculturalism is dead: long may it rest in peace

David Cameron told us in 2012 that multiculturalism is dead. In
the same year the introduction of the new Teachers’ Standards require all
teachers “not to undermine fundamental British values” (FBV) (DfE 2012), and requires
them to promote FBV within and outside school. However, the issues that arise
from Britain being a multicultural society are not going away. Following Brexit
everyone knows that immigration is a key topic of debate in our homes, our pubs
and bars, our social media and in our schools and classrooms. Following 9/11 in
New York, 7/7 in London, the growth of Islamic State in Syria and the so-called
Trojan Horse Affair in Birmingham and the requirement of head teachers and
governors to safeguard children and young people from radicalism and extremism
(HMG, 2015) we know Muslims have been singled out as the ‘other’ who needs
surveillance. It is time to ask some pertinent questions about Britain’s
imperialist past and to question a national identity that is promoting
whiteness.

These two issues: immigration and Muslim as ‘other’ spills into
the school – how should teachers respond when it does? How can teachers support
the children of those who are being vilified or bullied because they are
migrants or Muslims (or both), or a second or third generation person of
colour? What can teachers do to make sure they understand the issues for themselves?
How can they feel confident to know when students bring ‘false news’ to the
classroom and to challenge it? How can teachers ensure they can make the
distinction between fact and opinion? Dealing with the issues around
immigration and racism is a challenging task and teachers need help.

Truth and False News

Let’s start with some definitions. How can we distinguish
between truth and false news? A scientific definition is helpful. Any scientist
will tell you there are no truths, only interpretation, but they will also tell
you there are verifiable facts. Teachers need to ensure they understand the
facts and be able to separate these from how those facts are presented and interpreted.
Teachers need to be good at this because they have the job of ensuring young
people know the facts, and have the critical thinking skills to question how
they are presented. Teachers also need to understand how government policy
influences how facts are presented and how the press mediate information to the
public. This has never been more important. The digital revolution allows virtually
anyone to create and share news and this is undermining the role of both
government commentators and the free press.

These issues are not going to go away. In Britain today
government and media have failed to ensure that the British people understand the
facts of migration issues and of Islam. The power axis between government and
media create ‘regimes of truth’ and create dominant ways of thinking. We
construct society through the language we use and in mediating issues around
immigration to the public, government and media have created a climate of
hostility towards migrants, asylum seekers and Muslims that teachers should be
deeply worried about and know how to sort out fact from opinion. Let’s start
with some verifiable facts.

Historical background to
understanding migration

We have to start with our history. We cannot think about migration
into Britain without looking at how Britain transformed from a colonial to a
post-colonial power after the Second World War. As one migrant said to me in
1975, “We are here because you were there”. From my experience of working with
trainee teachers over 20 years, I know that some of the basic facts about
Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world and how we manage race relations
here are not well known, it is therefore important to give a brief overview
here.

A brief history of Empire

The basic facts of the British Empire are well documented and
tell the story of imperial exploitation and plunder that enriched Britain and
left the exploited worse off. However, this is not the way Empire is perceived
by the majority of the British public. In 2014 a YouGov poll found 59% of
respondents through the British Empire was ”something to be proud of”, and only
19% were “ashamed” of its misdeeds. There is clearly a mismatch here between
facts and opinions. Teachers have a responsibility to understand the facts so
let’s begin with a brief overview of Empire.

Let’s start with slavery. The first British slave voyage was led
by John Hawkins in 1562 in the reign of Elizabeth 1. Africans were captured and
sold as goods in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. The Slave Trade was
finally ended in 1827 and historians estimate that British ships carried 3.4 of
the 12 million slaves as part of the triangular trade. Ships left the ports of
London, Bristol and Liverpool carrying goods made in Britain. They arrived in
West Africa and exchanged these goods for slaves. On the third part of the
journey they would arrive in the West Indies (Caribbean) where they were sold to
plantation owners.The profits made from
slavery financed the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the Caribbean Islands
became the hub of the British Empire.

Imperial expansion began with the acquisition of Newfoundland as
a colony in North America (1583-1818) and then moved into Central America and
the Caribbean beginning with Barbados in 1628. Britain moved into South America
and Asia in the 18-19th century, Australasia and the Pacific from
1832-1907. The first African colony was Natal in 1856, and Britain colonised
most of South and East Africa and much of West Africa in the 19th
century.

By 1913, Britain controlled 23% of the world population and 24%
of the total land area. At the peak of its power, the phrase ‘the empire on
which the sun never sets’ was used because Britain’s expanse around the globe
meant the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories. After the
second world war Britain divested itself of its colonies and since 1948, 59
countries have gained independence from British rule.

The impact of Empire on the colonized took myriad forms. In some
places like Australia, North America and New Zealand conquest was so successful
that the indigenous peoples of those lands are today small minorities whose
lives are frequently blighted by poverty and discrimination. Those of white
European descent dominate, racism towards these first nations’ peoples is well
documented and verifiable discrimination abounds.

Other forms of empire took the form of conquest followed by ruling
from a distance, usually with the cooperation of local people who worked as
civil servants and tax collectors. In
this way Britain controlled India, much of Asia and the Middle East during the
19th century and conflict over land and between peoples today can
often be traced back to the straight lines drawn on maps by Britain and the
other European colonizing powers as they fought each other for domination. In
Africa there were different approaches to colonization from the widespread
settlements of British immigrants in East and South Africa, to the rule from a
distance in West Africa. Empire is nothing if not complex.

History attests that the colonial enterprise was for the benefit
of the colonizers, the flow of people under slavery, resources and raw
materials under colonialism, from the colonies to Britain made us the
wealthiest country in the world and resulted in impoverishment for the
colonies. Some of the worst atrocities against people were committed by Britain
under colonialism. This included the creation of concentration camps in South
Africa during the Boer War (1899-2002); the massacre of Indians carrying out a
peaceful protest against British colonial rule in Amritsir in India in 1919; the
partitioning of India into India and Pakistan that displaced 10-12 million
people and created an overwhelming refugee crisis in 1947 where 1-2 million
died in the violence that erupted. Hostility and suspicion between India and
Pakistan is a legacy of partition. When the East India Company was established,
Britain was producing just 1.8% of the world’s GDP, while India was generating
23%. By 1940, Britain accounted for 10% of world GDP, while India had been
reduced to a destitute country with millions starving.

Between 12-29 million Indians died of starvation under the
British Empire as millions of tons of wheat were exported to Britain as famine
raged in India. In 1943, up to 4 million Bengalis staved to death when
Churchill diverted food to British soldiers during another famine in Bengal. Today
thousands of Kenyans have launched damages claims against the UK government for
the mistreatment, rape and torture of 100s during the Mau Mau uprising against
colonialism (1951-1960). We cannot tell the story of Empire without including slavery,
partition, torture, famine, concentration camps and massacre.

End of Empire

Things changed rapidly and decisively following the first-world-war
as anti-colonial movements gained momentum. Rebellions in Ireland, India,
China, the Caribbean, Egypt, South Africa, Malaya, Kenya, Iran and other places
in the early 20th century were subjugated, but could not be contained.
The victory of the second-world-war left Britain bankrupt and unable to
continue operating as a colonial power. First to divest was India. Always
considered the ‘jewel in the crown’, the people of India had engaged in
sustained resistance to British rule for much of the 20th century
and finally won its independence in 1947. Britain partitioned India to create
Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Pakistan was divided into East and West
Pakistan, separated by the Republic of India. Unsurprisingly this arrangement proved
disastrous and resulted in revolution following West Pakistan’s genocidal
attacks on the East that ended with the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. For
over 200 years Britain took what it wanted from India and when they left 90% of
the population lived in poverty, life expectancy was 27 and literacy was only
16% (Tharoor, 2017).

By the mid-60s the bulk of the British Empire had been
decolonized, frequently through armed resistance with its resulting bloodshed.

Events at home

Having provided this extremely brief overview of Britain’s
Empire, I turn to events at home. Members of the British Empire were considered
British and in 1948, the British Nationality Act gave the right to enter, work
and settle in Britain to all colonial and commonwealth citizens. Following
this, in 1949, a Royal Commission on Population identified a significant
shortage of labour in Britain. The Commission thus paved the way for active
recruitment from the former colonies to the labour market in Britain.

Following this, British Rail, the NHS and London Transport
deliberately targeted labour recruitment from the commonwealth and hundreds of
thousands of people were recruited, initially from the Caribbean and India, to
fill labour gaps in the economy.

In 1948, the first migrants arrived from the Caribbean on the good
ship Empire Windrush. It is important to remind ourselves slavery had
transported Africans to the ’West Indies’ over the three centuries that Britain
was involved in the slave trade and one could argue Britain had obligations
towards these descendants of former slaves who, following decolonization, had
few means to create viable economies. Britain was ‘the motherland’ and the
motherland said it needed them.

How would this much needed labour be received in the ‘mother
country’? How would government and media respond to their arrival? This was a
pivotal time in our history. Let’s momentarily jump forward to 2012 and David
Cameron’s speech in Germany on radicalization and the causes of terrorism. In
this speech he referred to his government’s belief in certain values which
government had a responsibility to actively promote. He listed those values as:

Freedom of speech.
Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights regardless of
race, sex or sexuality. It says to its citizen: this is what defines us as a
society.

If only these Fundamental British Values had been articulated so
clearly to the majority population as migrants from the Caribbean and India
started to arrive on these shores. It might have influenced how the media
responded to the arrival of these former colonial subjects. At this time the
vast majority of the population in Britain had never seen a person of colour
and information about the new arrivals and why they were here was largely drawn
from the media. How the media, in particular the tabloid press chose to
represent these people was not in keeping with the list of British values cited
by Cameron above.

The newcomers had been actively recruited to fill Britain’s
labour shortage and surely had a right to be treated fairly. Unfortunately this
didn’t happen. Neither government nor the media did anything to ensure the
general public was properly prepared for immigration. Rather, the period
1948-1970s saw the racialization of British politics whilst governments of both
parties stood back and watched it happen.

The new post-war Labour government introduced the NHS that
needed to be staffed, they committed to a large house-building programme that
needed workers, they established a comprehensive transport system in London
that needed recruits. The need to recruit workers was especially necessary as
many of the indigenous white population were migrating to Australia, Canada and
New Zealand – this was in fact a time of net migration. Labour was recruited to
support the economy but the British people were not prepared to support the
migrants.

Mediation of history

A pattern began to emerge that established how Britain responds
to migrants that is true to this day. Now we shift from the facts to the way
those facts are presented to the public. We see how government and media
present the truths of migration to the country. As stated above, the state
sought to recruit labour to meet the needs of the expanding capitalist society.
Labour came not only from the former colonies, but also included hundreds of
thousands of displaced Europeans and Irish. The presence of the white migrants was
largely ignored by the media who focused instead on those who were visibly
different because of the colour of their skin.

At this time a group of white racists, both inside and outside the
government, began to ferment fear over competition between the indigenous
population and immigrants for limited resources: jobs, housing, education and
health care, and thus started what has become a familiar mantra – the
immigrants ‘take our jobs’ and ‘cost the country too much’.

Soon this repeated mantra manifested itself in trouble and here
we can identify biased reporting in the media. In 1958, when groups of white
youth attacked black youth from the Caribbean, the media named this racist event
as ‘The Notting Hill Riots’. Reported by the media as evidence that there were
just ‘too many’ ethnic minorities, the British government responded not by
challenging the racist claims made by the press, not by naming this as ‘opinions’
which were not supported by the facts, but by pandering to the tabloids and restricting
immigration. And so cycles of racist attacks and media misreporting stimulated
cycles of immigration restriction. We have here the fact of migration, but the
decision to focus on ‘coloured’ migration as problematic. Instead of
challenging this and making the case for migration from the former colonies the
British government set about a policy of restricting such migration.

Restricting migration

In 1962, the Conservatives introduced the Commonwealth
Immigrants Act that restricted black and Asian migration, not people from the
white Commonwealth, the thousands of Canadians and Australians that came here,
just people of colour. This could have been an opportunity for government to
start making the case – to help the British white population understand our
colonial past, our obligations to our former colonies, our need for labour, the
perceived necessity of migration, but they did not. This decision was shared by
both of the main political parties; when Labour came to power in 1968 they
introduced an even more restrictive Commonwealth Immigrants Act. The Acts
specifically denied the automatic right to entry and abode of black and Asian
British citizens from the Commonwealth.

It became apparent that both parties in power wanted to present
themselves as responding to public fears of black immigration that had been
stirred up by politicians, other public figures and especially the media,
rather than make the case for their policies of labour recruitment or the moral
case of obligation to those whose resources and labour had been exploited under
colonialism that had made Britain the wealthiest country in the world.

Managing Race Relations

Alongside restrictions on immigration came three Race Relations
Acts in 1963, 1968 and 1976, requiring the state to ban discrimination on
grounds of race, colour or ethnic origin. This was important, however, the Acts
made little difference to ongoing discrimination and racist attacks. Race
relations in Britain had become a significant political issue that would be a
feature of every election to come. The opportunity for government to challenge
media representation had been lost.

The media had done a good job – the majority of the indigenous
white community in Britain believed there were too many people of colour in
Britain.Despite the 1991 census that
showed only 5% of people in Britain were migrants (including all those born
outside Britain, white and people of colour), polls asking people to estimate
numbers of Black and Asian migrants consistently found people over-estimated
the actual numbers by massive amounts. And yet, successive governments did
nothing to challenge these misconceptions and study after study through the
1980s and 1990s showed that ethnic minorities were systematically excluded from
equal participation in Britain because they were discriminated against. ‘Coloured’
immigration was constantly on the front page of the tabloid press. Gallup polls
in the 1960s consistently showed over 70% of the population wanted further immigration
control and the government responded with further restrictions.

The National Curriculum

In 1988 the first National Curriculum was introduced in England and
Wales. This was an opportunity to ensure everyone was taught about the British
Empire and understood migration to Britain. History was a compulsory subject,
but unfortunately the opportunity was lost – it did not include the history of Empire.
Opinion polls have consistently shown that the majority of British people think
the Empire was a good thing, something to be proud. Considering the brief
history presented above, the polls indicate that the general public have very
little understanding of the true nature of Empire where Britain used violence
to rule other people, deny them independence, exploit their labour and take
their resources.

Academic historians have called for honest history teaching if
our children are to understand our past. Dr Andrea Major at the University of
Leeds, for example, has called for improved teaching about the British Empire,
claiming there is “a collective amnesia about the levels of violence,
exploitation and racism involved in many aspects of imperialism”.

Education about all aspects of British colonial history can’t be
the sole responsibility of schools. The media have to take some responsibility
to generate more open debate to ensure all the public gain a better understanding
of the world around them and in particular our fellow British citizens whose
heritage lies in the countries of our colonial past. As Dr. Esme Cleall from
the University of Sheffield says, “The violence of the British Empire has long
been forgotten. We need to face up to this history and education is crucial if
we are to do so.”

Teaching of course can only do so much. Young people deserve to
know the facts of Empire, but they need also need critical skills to understand
how a lack of open and honest appraisal of the past creates false facts and
biased opinion.

Public figures

We cannot lay the blame for the misrepresentation of history and
in particular of immigration entirely at the door of the media. Politicians are
also culpable. In 1968 the now infamous Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South
West, Enoch Powell made what has come to be referred to as his ‘Rivers of
Blood’ speech in which he criticized Commonwealth immigration and the
government’s anti-discrimination legislation. Powell was a powerful speaker who
voiced fears that immigration would lead to bloodshed and it caused a political
storm and his dismissal from Edward Heath’s shadow cabinet. But his rhetoric also
caused a media storm and is considered a significant turning point in race
relations.

He was not the first Conservative MP to use race relations as a
means to gain popularity. The 1964 General Election saw Labour come to power,
however in Smethwick, the Conservative candidate gained the seat using the
slogan, "If you want a nigger for a neighbor, vote Labour".

Events such as these influenced the decision by the Policy
Studies Institute in 1968 to carry out research into racial discrimination in
Britain and found it was "from the massive to the substantial". The
tabloid press was found to play a large part in this, particularly with a
campaign during the 1960s to criminalise black youth. They consistently presented
street violence with scant regard to the truth.

Much research has been done into media representation of ethnic
minorities and there is a consensus that representation has been distorted and
has reinforced existing prejudice among the public. The presence of media bias has
been established through painstaking analysis of headlines, articles and space
given to minority issues in our newspapers. The media, particularly the Tabloid
press, use stereotypes to portray minority ethnic groups and over-report Black
crime fueling fears about threats allegedly posed by Blacks to the White
majority. By contrast, Black experience as victims of crime and police
harassment of Black families has rarely been reported. Ethnic minorities are
more frequently associated with negative personal characteristics and
tendencies to crime and violence, not as victims of discrimination. This
misrepresentation has been shown to be consistent over time and has made a huge
contribution to Britain’s endemic racism.

Governments must take their share of the blame for deciding to
exploit the public’s fear of immigration for their own gain. In 1968 Enoch
Powell’s rhetoric inciting fear of people of colour and streets running with
blood won votes. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher suggested “People are really rather afraid that
this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture,” and
in 2014 Michael Fallon repeated it by claiming British towns are being “swamped” by immigrants and their residents are “under siege [with] large numbers of
migrant workers and people claiming benefits”. The Conservative
anti-immigration rhetoric surfaced again when Cameron’s (2016) described refugees
fleeing from persecution as “a bunch of migrants”, or the numbers of people
seeking refuge in Europe as a “swarm”. Cameron took the rhetoric further by
claiming the “traditional submissiveness of Muslim women’ put them ‘at risk of
radicalization”, or when he announced Britain could deport people who fail to
learn English – all grist to the mill of a racist press and an ignorant public.

I could go on and on – politicians and government are part of
the problem and the press should be holding them to account. Teachers have to
be able to recognize how prejudice expressed by politicians and repeated in the
media influences how children and young people see the world and make a
determine effort to challenge racist rhetoric.

Change for the better

That is not to say things have not changed, there is evidence
that responsible journalists have tried to change attitudes related to ethnic
minority issues and there is evidence of more positive reporting in the 1990s,
particularly in the quality press where the voices of ethnic minorities are
heard and the problems they experience given a hearing. It is true that Black
African and Asian minorities are now treated in the media far better than in
the 1970s and 80s. That doesn’t mean negative portrayals have stopped, they
have simply shifted their focus towards newly arrived groups such as asylum
seekers, Muslims and some EU members.

The real increase in immigration however, came not from the
Commonwealth, but with our membership of the European Union and the free
movement of people. Today the immigrant population is mainly white, but despite
this, prejudice, discrimination, violence and hatred against people of colour
prevails.

The election of New Labour in 1997 saw a stated commitment to
social justice for racial minorities for the first time. Following the murder
of Black African student Stephen Lawrence, stabbed by a gang of white youth
whilst waiting for a bus, Labour established The Lawrence Enquiry and the
subsequent report by Macpherson (1998) did help shape Labour’s thinking about
institutionalized racism.

The subsequent Race Relations Amendment Act (2000) signaled a
commitment to ending institutionalized racism in our public services,
especially the police and the parallel ‘duty to promote’ racial equality was
established by the Commission for Racial Equality in 2003. However, Section 19
of the RRA 2000 excluded asylum and refuge. This is significant as
restrictions on immigration now meant the majority of people of colour entering
Britain are asylum seekers.

Inevitable the events of 9/11 and 7/7 changed the terms of
public discourse about race forever, leading to a shift in prejudice and racism
away from people of colour towards those of the Muslim faith, a cultural racism
identified as Islamaphobia.

Where are we now?

The Race Relations Act (1965) outlawed racist discrimination
that was the daily experience of migrants from the Empire during the 50-70s. It
certainly did help to reduce prejudice. Today we have measures in place so the
state can act decisively to challenge racism, but little has been done to actively
challenge the expressed racial prejudice of very large and significant sections
of the white British population. Report after report (usually following
significant racist incidents) has found that racism is endemic and
discrimination is pervasive (see, for example the Scarman Report (1981)
following the Brixton riots; the Burnage Report: Murder in the Playground (1989) following the
murder of an Asian youth in a Manchester school playground; The Macpherson Report
(1998) following the murder of Stephen Lawrence). Government has done very
little to challenge racist views and instead has gone along with the idea that
immigration is inherently problematic. Extreme far-right racism embodied by
such organisations as the National Front and the British and Welsh Defence
League continue to exist and racially motivated attacks are common.

It can’t be denied that the lives of many ethnic minorities have
improved, they are represented in parliament, in the media and the professions,
this is all good, but the main point is that it is one thing to tackle
prejudice that restricts opportunities for people of colour, it is quite
another to tackle the endemic racism that still exists in Britain that came to
the fore post-Brexit. Racism is still a systemic, structural problem in
Britain. The unemployment rate for all ethnic minorities is twice as high as
for whites – these are verifiable facts. Whatever issues we look at – health,
education, housing, over-representation in the criminal justice system – things
are worse if you are a person of colour. Racism is alive and well, and rooted
in our colonial past. As a nation we have avoided dealing with it.

Media ‘truths’

Immigration and race relations have always been and continue to
be framed by the media; their focus on the problems of people of colour, on the
competition for health, education, housing and jobs between the white
population and people of colour sets the tone. People of colour are presented
as having problems – they don’t speak English; they prefer to live in ghettos
rather than assimilate. The tabloid press fails to report widespread racial
discrimination that empirical studies have consistently found – from employers,
housing agencies, Trade Unions, local government or to condemn the physical and
verbal abuse people of colour frequently experience on the street.

Today with the successful reduction of immigration from the
former colonies, most people of colour in Britain are second or third
generation and the press have shifted their focus towards problems of cultural
adaptation, intergenerational differences and disagreements, gender roles,
religious extremism, dangers of radicalization etc. The problems are presented
as with the communities and not with
the racial prejudice of the white majority.

No government has ever taken serious the problem of tackling
white racism; rather it has encouraged and exacerbated it. David Cameron is
right ­– multiculturalism is dead. And long may it rest in peace. As he said in
2012, “multiculturalism encouraged different cultures to live separate lives,
apart from each other and the mainstream”. Rather than challenge racism,
successive governments opted for multiculturalism to emphasis difference and
separateness, to ‘celebrate’ cultural diversity and despite a brief flirtation
with anti-racist education in the 1980s with the publication of The Swann
Report (1985), multicultural approaches prevailed and have done nothing to
challenge white racism.

In his speech Cameron also claimed, ”…when a white person holds
objectionable views – racism, for example – we rightly condemn them.” And yes, the
law does condemn, but when government provide grist to the tabloid press mill
with its racist rhetoric it is hard to take it seriously. A government so serious
about FBV that they require all schools to teach them should also condemn those
who flout them. The media consistently presents one-sided, distorted or
alarmist stories about people of colour, and recently in particular, inaccurate
stories about Muslims and asylum seekers have prevailed.

We live in a country where a sizeable portion of society,
maybe the majority, is hostile to people of colour and most recently this has
been extended to our fellow Europeans, many of whom don’t feel welcome here
anymore. Victims of prejudice find their exercise
of freedom of opinion and expression reduced, a specific flouting of FBV.

False
news?

Reporting in a truthful and balanced way has always been an
important professional goal for journalists. Today the integrity of journalists
of all persuasions is being challenged. Journalists who in the past have
expressed opinions by describing black youth as ‘thugs’ or ‘criminals’ or
Muslims as ‘terrorists’ have created stereotypes and reinforced prejudices that
have contributed to the endemic racism that is present in Britain today. When
opinions held by the majority of the public are actually based on ignorance, or
false facts that have been fostered by politicians’ rhetoric or tabloid
opinions, then it is hard for any of us to sort out truth from falsity, and
in the field of immigration and race relations trying to distinguish fact from
fiction is a minefield. As teachers we have an especial responsibility to
ensure the young people in our care know the facts and can sort out the
difference between fact and opinion. If we are to teach FBV and prepare our
young people for democracy, this task has to be built into everything we do.
And we must start by ensuring teachers have the knowledge, skills and
understanding to do the job.

Those responsible for Initial Teacher Training and Continual
Professional Development have a moral duty to ensure that teachers know the
facts and have the skills to deconstruct how facts are mediated to the public
by government and media. Surely this is central to teaching Fundamental British
Values.

About Me

Forty years an educator. Retired Head of Teacher Professional Development. Now run my own company, Dialogue Exchange Ltd working with children and teachers on Philosophy for Children, The Storytelling Curriculum and the Rights of the Child.